After being used for a long period of time, the blade of a knife can be worn and becomes dull. Once the knife becomes dull, people usually use a sharpening stone to hone the knife to restore its sharpness. Since conventional sharpening stone is bulky and not easy to store, a smaller and lighter honing apparatus becomes more popular in market. Also, the honing apparatus is usually coupled with a suction unit to secure the honing apparatus.
As can be seen in FIG. 9, a conventional honing apparatus with the suction unit includes: a honing body (70), a suction unit (71), a control component (72) and a top cap (73), wherein the honing body (70) has a through hole in the middle thereof and the suction unit (71) can generate vacuum suction force when it is attached to a flat surface. A pulling rod is extended from a center of a lateral surface and penetrates through the through hole of the honing body (70) to hingedly secure the control component (72). The control component (72) has an eccentric protruding component (721) and an extended actuating unit (722) on the other side. The top cap (73) is engaged with the honing body on the top thereof and a sharpening stone with a V-shaped opening is formed on the top of the honing body.
When a user uses the honing apparatus, the suction unit (71) is attached to the flat surface and the actuating unit (722) is managed to be against the honing body (70) with the eccentric protruding component (721). When the suction unit (71) is pulled, a corresponding vacuum force in the suction unit (71) is generated. Furthermore, the honing body (70) pushes down the circumference of the suction unit (71) to secure it on the flat surface. At this time, the user can hone dull single-blade knives (e.g. kitchen knives, fruit knives, etc.) at the sharpening stone (731) until the knives become sharp again.
However, the abovementioned honing apparatus only focuses on single-blade knives. If the user wants to hone dual-blade tools such as scissors or garden shears, the two blades of the dual-blade tools cannot be completely open due to the thickness of the honing apparatus so that the conventional honing apparatus cannot be efficiently used on dual-blade tools. Even if the two blades can be totally separated, it may be too troublesome during the entire honing process. Furthermore, many of the dual-blade tools cannot be separated. Therefore, there remains a need for a new and improved honing apparatus which can be used for both single-blade and dual-blade tools.